


Spirit Touched

by lingering_nomad



Series: From the Ashes [2]
Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Hawke's Backstory (Dragon Age), Magical Theory (Dragon Age), Spirit Healer Malcolm, Spirit Mage Hawke
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-05
Updated: 2020-11-05
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:40:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27398893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lingering_nomad/pseuds/lingering_nomad
Summary: The Hawkes and Vallens evaded the horde for three days. Now, on a mountain pass in the Korcari wilderness the darkspawn have caught up, and they’re running out of options.
Relationships: Aveline Vallen/Wesley Vallen
Series: From the Ashes [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/176042
Comments: 4
Kudos: 12





	Spirit Touched

**Author's Note:**

> **Topography:** “spoken dialogue,” “ _flashback dialogue_ ,” ‘ _thoughts_ ,’ _emphasis_  
>  **A/N:** I’m not sure if any of my magic theories are canon compliant anymore and I really don’t care. I used the [ Project Elvhen: Elvhen Lexicon](https://www.archiveofourown.org/works/3719848) by [FenxShiral](https://www.archiveofourown.org/users/FenxShiral/pseuds/FenxShiral) to cobble together the Elvish in this fic. Thank you for this awesome resource. Elvish translations are in the end note.

~ Ferelden, on a mountain pass in the Korcari Wilds, three days’ travel from the hamlet of Lothering, 9:30 Dragon ~

They were surrounded.

His mother huddled between his brother and hound, sword and fangs bared in readiness. The army sergeant had pushed her wounded husband behind her, braced in turn behind the scant defence of his sunburst shield.

Wreath stood in the midst of it all, his sister beside him.

It was not so much a protective formation as the posturing of the doomed, mulishly refusing to bear their throats in acceptance of their fate.

The throng of darkspawn mulled and surged, repelled for a moment by flame and ice, only to regroup and charge anew. Neither he, nor his sister were versed in the shaping of primal forces. Not to this scale. As the most extravagant of the magical schools, it did not lend itself to the clandestine practise of apostates. They were both tiring – faster than the ‘spawn were inclined to retreat.

Palsy thrummed along Wreath’s limbs; sweat dripped from his brow. His skin felt too thin, the Fade too near, seeping acrid and stinging into his blood. He tore another swell of fire through the Veil, feeling the strain of it in the grafts where tendons clung to bone. He mustered what power he could and pushed it into the spell, spurred by the darkspawn’s incoherent shrieking and the stench of melting flesh.

“I can’t!” Bethany gasped suddenly, her voice shrill with anguish. “I—I _can’t_ , Wreath! _”_

He felt the Veil ripple, pulsing slightly as the syphon of his sister’s casting was stoppered, marked by a crack bursting along the wall of ice that warded off the attack from the rear.

The templar had begun to recite the Canticle of Trials, Arshavir’s growling and the distant snarls of the horde not quite drowning out his mother’s terrified keening.

Wreath’s own mana was nearing its end. The fiery barrier he’d conjured was already dwindling. One more casting. Two perhaps, and they would be down to their blades.

Three against…three hundred?

It mattered not. Even if the shifting throng came to a tenth of that figure, they were still outnumbered and overwhelmingly so. The promise he’d made to his father, years ago now, with hands and sword stained in the blood of templars, rose in his mind – the last words they would ever exchange.

“ _Prom-mise… me…_ ”

“ _I’ll live. I’ll live,”_ vowed while tasting blood and dazed with pain. _“I’ll live and I’ll protect them. I swear it._ ”

Beth and Mother and Carver. Arsha too. He would honour that vow, or perish in the attempt.

What formed in his thoughts was not so much a plan as a leap of blind impulse.

He’d done it once. Long before their move to Lothering.

His father had bartered a calf, six of the family’s goats, a full pound of healing herbs and a tiny pouch that he now knew contained lyrium, in exchange for the Keeper’s instruction. Dalish were never keen to impart their ways to ‘ _shem’len_ ,’ but the clan needed the trade. Wreath had been too young to grasp the full controversy of the bargain, but he’d understood that he was to be entrusted with a secret that could keep his family safe.

Family, safety and secrets – the pillars his world balanced upon, even as a boy.

The wizened elf’s teachings had verged on cryptic. Clumsy metaphors in the Prophet's tongue, interspersed with random Elvish. Yet, some part of Wreath, lying deeper than his consciousness had recognised the lesson.

“You wish me to teach, yes. What is your reason, _da’len?_ ”

It took him a moment to understand what he was being asked. “Um, because. I don’t want to be scared anymore.”

The Keeper nodded. _“_ Courage, yes? Such spirits I know, but hold in your memories: it is the _daris’elgar_ – what your priestesses call _‘demons’ ­_ – that promise to make you what you are not. Courage is not the leaving of fear. Fear remains, _da’len_. Always, always. But the brave are not ruled by it. Your _lenalin_ ,” the Keeper said, glancing down the path his father had brought him. “He says you are…” Again, the elf paused, frowning as though vexed by the eccentricity of human speech. “ _Alas’len_?”

 _“_ Apostate? _”_ Wreath offered, the word already bitter in his mouth.

The Keeper’s frown deepened as if sensing his mood, but he offered no comment. “The human laws for _erelan_.” He lifted his hand, allowing the greenish-white glow of his mana to form – for magic, for mages. “They are chains of fear. Such bonds are needed when _Ghilanna'in_ grows weak within. When too many become _solas ma ghilana_ ” – Dalish for ‘ _corrupt and self-serving_ ’ as Wreath eventually learned.

“To let fear rule, is to chain yourself,” the Keeper went on. “We fear what makes weak. You cannot be stronger than a weakness that hides. To rule fear, you must know what makes weak. You must know yourself and trust what you know. Words are easy. The doing is not. The path, is what I can show you, _da’len_. To walk, you must choose.”

“I want to learn… _Amelan,_ ” he said, his attempt at Elvish as rough as the Keeper’s Common. “Please. Show me this path.”

The Keeper’s staff tapped on the soil. “ _Saron_ _enemah. Mya, len’sila_.”

Align.

Focus.

Open.

Release.

He was told to think on valour and virtue. They sat on the ground, the Keeper singing of his people’s bygone glory while Wreath recited the Canticle of Exaltations as his mother had taught him.

“ _Lady of Perpetual Victory, your praises I sing!_

_Gladly do I accept the gift invaluable_

_Of your glory! Let me be the vessel_

_Which bears the Light of your promise_

_To the world expectant._ ”

When his mind was quiet, wandering the edge between waking and sleep, he was handed a flask and told to drink. The liquid was oily, tasting of iron and ice. Suddenly, he became as pebbles on a riverbed, tiny stones amid the coursing of power, seeping between the grafting of body and soul.

Had he failed, he would have died on the Keeper’s dagger that day. It was a risk Malcolm Hawke had been willing to take. Wreath had chosen not to see it as a betrayal, but a mark of his father’s belief.

He hadn’t been told, but at the age of twelve, he would be facing his Harrowing.

“Still, _len’sila_. Be still. Let it fill you, but do not reach. Do not yearn. Know yourself and be only that. You are stone; it is the water. Let it flow, but direct its course.”

He remembered the loose pieces of himself, pushed apart by the spirit’s invasion, held together by the force of his will. The spirit suffused him, pulsing and pure, but it did not seek to overwhelm.

“Do not peer too intently,” the Keeper had warned, his voice near and distant at once. The words were understood without truly hearing, the knowledge simply filling his mind, like a candle being lit. “Spirits do not tempt, but they are beings of power, and power is alluring to any mortal. Do not soften the stone of yourself, or the water will enter and break it apart. It will become muddied with the essence of you, and you diluted with the essence of it. It will be lost inside you, unable to withdraw, and you will drown from within.”

Expelling the spirit had felt like breathing and, indeed, exhaling water.

When he came back to himself, the Keeper was there. So was Malcolm. The latter was worried, speaking his name, touching his face. The former, however, wore a look of pensive respect.

“ _Felas’el, shem_ ,” The Keeper had said, addressing his father. “Young he is, but the _ghilanas_ that guides him is strong. This should not shock you. Are you not _ladarelan'elgar_ yourself?”

Malcolm’s gaze shot to the elf’s with a spark of ire, but he said nothing in reply.

The Keeper had smiled as he turned to Wreath. “ _Nira, emma len’sila_ ,” he said with a dip of the chin. “This day, you are _era'elgar_. The path, you have seen and have walked. Keep in your memories, the learning. Walk, _da’len_. Do not fall…”

In his desperation, the memory was a mere flicker behind Wreath’s eyes, but it gave him what he needed.

He’d wrested the templar’s flask of lyrium draught from him shortly after joining forces, aided by the voice of reason that was the man’s wife. Her blind acceptance of his word that she and her husband wouldn’t be harmed had been… unexpected. He’d been sure the good Andrastian sergeant would side with her man, but he was grateful that it hadn’t come to blows.

Unlike his boyhood experience with the Keeper, he had no time to prepare. The ice was breaking behind them, the fire was dying in front. The screams of his mother and sister’s animal terror blended with the frenzied, encroaching snarls of the horde.

The process, however, remained unaltered.

Align.

Focus.

Open.

Release.

Ser Wesley was still chanting. In the midst of the chaos, Wreath closed his eyes and mouthed the ancient words in tandem, aligning his purpose to the other man’s – to the generations of chanters before them – and opened his mind to the Fade.

“… _enemies are abundant._

_Many are those who rise up against me._

_But my faith sustains me; I shall not fear the legion,_

_Should they set themselves against me_ …”

With shaking fingers, he pulled the templar’s confiscated flask from his satchel and brought it to his lips. The taste was as he remembered, but he had barely an instant before the corporeal world fell away.

At once, a niggle. Temptation, yet not. A sense of resilience, of fortitude, swept through his being, bright and pure as silverite.

A spirit.

An offer.

“ _You are the stone,_ ” the teaching echoed. “ _It is the water_. _”_

Wreath exhaled, and let it flow through him.

* * *

~ Ferelden, a makeshift camp in the Korcari Wilds, four days’ travel from the hamlet of Lothering, 9:30 Dragon ~

“Yesterday, on the pass. What manner of spell did you use?”

Wreath rose and ambled to an outcropping of stone where Ser Wesley propped himself up. He moved to the edge of the other man’s personal space. Near enough to agitate, but not to truly threaten. The sun-shield’s wife had gone with Carver and Arsha to scout ahead, but they would not venture far.

As much as the templar’s stream of misgivings rankled, cooperation bolstered their extremely slim odds of survival slightly. The good sergeant had proven that she favoured pragmatism over dogmatic debates, but Wreath would not put it past her to part ways if given cause to question the sincerity of their truce.

Even so, he was an apostate minding a templar.

Had their roles been reversed, had _Wreath_ been the one lying prone and bleeding at the mercy of pestilence incarnate, would the knight have seen fit to intervene?

The man’s idea of thanks for their charity – “ _Postponing the hunt for illegal mages,_ ” in Bethany’s words – did not bode well in Wreath’s estimation.

“Elf magic,” Wreath said matter-of-factly, leaning closer with the air of one imparting a secret. “I’ll hazard a guess that it’s not taught in your _prisons_.”

Petty of him, but harmless enough.

The templar bristled. “I’ve never _seen_ an elf who could summon that kind of power. The only things that came close were blood mages. Or _Maleficarum_.”

Wreath’s grin showed teeth. “That casting was controlled by _my_ will, Templar. It spared whom _I_ chose and... well, you saw what was left of ‘spawn. Demons aren’t known for their mercy. If I were enthralled, you wouldn’t be here.”

He made to turn, feigning departure, but stilled instead. Focussing on the hum of the Fade in his blood, he slackened his control, allowing his mana to swell to the surface. Without the filter of his will to shape it, the power rippled forth in an iridescent haze, thick with the scent of wind and storm. Sparks rose on his arms – simply static playing leapfrog between the hair on his skin and the shifting nimbus. It was light without substance; as benign as such forces were capable of being, yet Wreath knew all too well how the display would appear when viewed through the lens of suspicion.

He was not disappointed.

Wesley drew up as much as he was able, his functional hand dropping to the hilt of his blade. Schooling his features into an impassive mask, Wreath focussed a small portion of energy until he felt the prickle of it behind his eyes. It was an utterly foolish thing to do, not least because it made his head ache and left an imprint on his vision that throbbed when he blinked, but also because it was plain wrong to bait an injured man in this way.

Ser Wesley _was_ a bastard templar, though, and it was something to do; a moment’s distraction from the fear and the waiting.

His vision blurred as the light pressed outward, but he did have the satisfaction of seeing the templar blanch.

“Wreath! Stop it!”

“Ow!” He blinked back spots as the magic dissipated. Hand pressed protectively to his hair, Wreath turned to scowl at his little sister.

“Possession is nothing to joke about. Idiot!” Bethany scolded as she drew up to him in brisk strides, landing a none-too-gentle smack against his arm for good measure. Her expression gentled as she turned to the templar. “Pardon him, Ser,” she offered, complete with a curtsey. “My brother has suffered an unfortunate number of blows to the head. Though I assure you, he’s not nearly so foolish as he pretends.”

Wreath arched a brow. His sister’s knack for throwing had been discovered before her magic; before the advent of her first adult tooth, even. Longsuffering as sweet Bethany was, her uncanny aim and remarkable velocity were skills her brothers (and several of the village boys) had swiftly learned to respect.

Wreath huffed. “’Hits to the head,’ she says,” he parroted, still patting at his scalp. “And your solution is, what? To crack my skull open?”

Beth met his eyes with a roll of her own. “Considering how hard _your_ head is, brother, it’s the stone that ought to be complaining.”

“Tch,” he scoffed, but there was a flicker of mirth behind it.

Ser Wesley said nothing more and Wreath didn’t apologise.

The scouting party returned with reports of movement off to the west. They ate cold rations in vigilant silence, before taking what they could carry and heading higher into the mountains where the ‘spawn wouldn’t be able to dig through the rock.

**Author's Note:**

>  _da’len_ – (m) young one  
>  _daris’elgar_ – demonic spirits  
>  _lenalin_ – father  
>  _Alas-len_ – (m) one who lives outside civilisation, lit. ‘child of the earth.’  
>  _Ghilanna’in_ – lit. ‘the guide inside you.’ Also the name of the elvish goddess of guidance (in all forms), navigation and ‘Mother of the Halla.’  
>  _erelan_ – mage, dreamer, spellcasters in general.  
>  _solas ma ghilana_ – lit. ‘followers of pride,’ refers to those blinded by hubris.  
>  _Amelan_ – keeper or protector (of the old lore). _Ghi’len_ – (m) teacher or guide, would have been a better word for young Hawke to use. ‘ _Amelan_ ’ is what he heard the clan use to address their leader. He is not part of the Dalish clan and therefore this elf is neither ‘the keeper’ nor ‘protector of his history,’ but he’s a young boy, trying to be respectful.  
> “ _Saron enemah. Mya, len’sila._ ” – “Then we begin. Be led, my student.”  
> “ _Felas’el, shem._ ” – “Calm down, human.”  
>  _ghilanas_ – luck, fate, destiny, lit. ‘guiding soul,’ the force that seems to operate for good or ill in a person's life, as in shaping circumstances, events, or opportunities.  
>  _ladarelan'elgar_ – lit. ‘one who heals spiritually,’ i.e. one who heals with the aid of spirits.  
> “Nira, emma len’sila” – “Congratulations, my student.”  
>  _era'elgar_ – spirit mage or spirit vessel depending on the context. Can refer to ‘good’ abominations, i.e. mages like Wynne or Flemeth, or to those who in some way have been touched, assisted, or temporarily inhabited by a benevolent spirit, e.g. many of the Seekers of Truth, including Cassandra.


End file.
